Emotional Brain and the Guilty Mind

This book seeks to reframe the normative narrative of the 'culpable person' in American criminal law through a more humanising lens. It embraces such a reframed narrative to revise the criteria of the current voluntarist architecture of culpability and to advance a paradigm of punishment that positions social rehabilitation as its core principle. <br/><br/>The book constructs this narrative by considering behavioural and neuroscientific insights into the functions of emotions and socio-environmental factors within moral behaviour in social settings. Hence it suggests culpability notions that reflect a more contextualised view of human conduct and argues that such revised notions are better suited to the principle of personal guilt. Furthermore it suggests a model of 'punishment' that values the dynamic power of change of individuals and acknowledges the importance of social relationships and positive environments to foster patterns of social (re)integration. <br/><br/>Ultimately this book argues that the potential adoption of the proposed models of culpability and punishment which view people through a more comprehensive lens may be a key factor for turning criminal justice into a less punitive more inclusionary and non-stigmatising system.